1. Field of the Invention
The invention generally relates to work station design and fabrication and, more particularly, to rotating work stations.
2. Description of the Related Art
In today's competitive global industrial environment only companies that maintain the highest productivity and quality standards will prosper. Frequently, companies are able to automate tasks to improve productivity and quality of the end products.
This is especially true for computer manufacturing industries where a majority of the tasks are performed by assembly machines. For example, chips carrying high density integrated circuits are often mounted on circuit boards by assembly-line machines. Using such assembly-line machines advantageously enables product designs that improve productivity and quality. However, in such industries, an end product such as a fully assembled computer cannot be entirely manufactured without human intervention. In fact, often many repetitive and difficult tasks can only be performed by human operators. Such tasks may include assembling various parts of a computer, fastening them, testing them and the like. It should be noted that these tasks require repetitive lifting, lowering and reaching motions which often cause muscular, skeletal stresses in the operator's body. Such problems, however, can be avoided by designing workstations which can give operators easy and comfortable access to their equipment and to the tasks that they perform. The implementation of such operator-friendly workstations in the work place may realistically improve productivity as well as reduce above-mentioned work related discomfort.
Similarly, the nature of the task being performed and the size of objects used in the task also play an important role in design and implementation of workstations. The workstation should be properly designed to accommodate the weight, size and the characteristics of the product on which the task is being performed.
For instance, in the computer industry, workstations should be equipped with suitable electrical grounding to ground electrostatic discharge (ESD) so that the fine circuits on the sensitive electronic parts can be shielded from the harmful effects of static-electricity. Additionally, if the assembling task involves heavy or cumbersome objects, such as computer servers used in internet technologies, the design of efficient working areas having proper safety features is often the most challenging part of the work station design. Such servers, for example, may weigh up to 200 lbs which makes them quite cumbersome to handle on a workstation during an assembly process. This is particularly true when the worker has to repeatedly move multiple objects of such weight.
In the computer industry, in order to overcome these problems, workstations having a metal work surface and a metal frame are often used. Such work stations are able to support heavy objects with their metallic, usually steel, construction. However, such workstations are not operator friendly. Operators typically have to put a great deal of effort in to handle the object or to move the object over the work surface. Further, operators often cannot comfortably reach all the tools and the parts as well as the object, from their fixed location. As an object being assembled becomes larger and heavier, operators are forced to reach further, until eventually they have to take steps around the work station to reach locations on the far ends of the object. Unfortunately, this inconvenient situation reduces the efficiency of the operator, and requires more individual work space around the workstation to gain access to these hard to reach places. Of course, this also increases the cost of the assembling system and its operation. Further, such metallic workstations need to be safely grounded to prevent static electricity problems. This requires proper grounding hardware and associated grounding connections, which further add to the production costs.
Thus, in the computer industry, there is a need to develop new ESD safe work stations which are capable of providing operators easy and comfortable access to their equipment while performing the necessary task. To this end there is a need for a workstation which provides grounding for ESD purposes and is easily adjustable to facilitate assembly of the object under construction.